Posted on

Behind the Scenes: T-shirt pressing for Regret & Resolve

 

We’re a week into taking submissions for Regret & Resolve and to get a jump start on all the t-shirt making we’ll have to do at the end of the month (remember, submissions close on January 25th), we’ve begun pressing some test shirts. We also got some great coverage in the University of Windsor Daily News (thanks!), and we’re starting to get the plans together for install and event opening (on January 31st at 7pm). In the meantime, here’s a peek at how we’re doing this t-shirt thing…

 

Using the handiest tool we’ve ever bought (our Graphtec vinyl cutter) and some t-shirt specific vinyl, we cut the letters backwards and then weed them (that is, pulling all the excess material off from around the letters). The vinyl cutter doesn’t puncture the clear substrate.

 

Then we take our little mock-ups and check for placement.

 

Hiba and Laura each did a regret and a resolve, laying it on the shirt, now right side forwards.

 

Then, to the heat press.

 

Laura may be the only one who nows how to use this thing so far. She did a bunch of tests a while ago and found the exact right settings to dial in.

 

Line up the shirt under the press.

And then, we have a t-shirt!

 

Hiba, checks her alignment against Laura’s.

 

Action sequence: Hiba presses the shirts.

 

It takes a good amount of force to bring the press down.

 

Then, lock it into place and wait for the ridiculous little tune that play in 8-bit squeaks. That’s when you know it’s done.

 

Then, we start on the window install.

And wrap up the evening putting up some new window vinyl.

There’s still a lot of time left to submit your idea for a Regret or Resolve t-shirt — but don’t wait to the last minute!

 

Posted on

Call for Participation: Regret & Resolve

tshirt-crop

With the start of the new year, we wanted to take stock of the regrets we have about the city or our roles within it, and the resolutions we might make to change this place for the better.

We want to ask two questions: What are the things that we know we should be doing, or wished we would do, or find ourselves scared to do, but never get around to actually doing? How can we take responsibility or ownership over our actions, or lack thereof, and find a way to be honest with where we should go next?

We’re wondering what citizenship looks like in a city like Windsor, and how we might be able to publicly and honestly articulate it.

Regret & Resolve  is a new project where we’ll be turning a series of resolutions and regrets into t-shirts. We’ll take online submissions from residents of Windsor and create a limited edition series of 50 shirts. Each selected submission will be made into two shirts — one for the author and one for our gallery exhibition. We’ll release all the shirts on the same night (January 31st) with an exhibition and exchange at Civic Space that will be open to the public.

We want these shirts to capture a moment of tension and hope in the city as we know it today and hope for it to be tomorrow. We feel like there may not be a venue to collectively articulate the responsibilities shared across this city, and that a t-shirt might be a good place to start. Printing these regrets and resolutions on t-shirts allows for a distributed conversation, a series of positions that we might take at the beginning of a new year, and a way to publicly talk about what we’ll do next. We’re really interested in an honest assessment of the things gone wrong, and the ways in which we might commit to righting them.

Interested? Fill out an online form between January 7-25, 2013 with your statement of regret or resolution. We’ll select 50 submissions and print them for the opening at Civic Space on January 31st from 7-9pm.

Submissions are now closed, see you on January 31 at 7pm!

Posted on

Civic Space Studio Digest for December 13: on t-shirts and white walls

A look at our little corner of Civic Space. This is where we’ve been spending the majority of our time lately. For the record, the high shelves (those really nice ones with the Letter Library letters on them) were installed by Kiki. The lower shelves were hacked together by me. They’re very shoddy, but they hold many things.

As we’ve been hosting our 1W3KND Residencies, I love coming in on Monday and seeing the little re-arrangements made. Last weekend (I think) the coffee maker and tea kettle got a new home.

Hiba was away, so I got together the little instruction set for the writers in residence and put it back in the big red 1W3KND case.

Meanwhile, Laura took on the task of repainting the walls. After two great exhibitions from Catie Newell’s class and the Green Corridor, the walls were in need of some repairs and touch ups.

One can of paint got us about 80% through. One wall left, will have to pick this up on Monday.

After painting, we spent the afternoon doing some more tests for this t-shirt project. The mangled shirt above features a number of test-sites of vinyl with various temperatures and times on the heat press.

But, before we could do more tests, we had to go back to the drawing board and get a better sense of the size of the potential texts.

We also played with a highlighter look instead of just straight text.

Our new weeding tools makes the vinyl cut process a lot faster.

Remember, cut in reverse for t-shirt vinyl!

Laura weeds.

Then, we place the design…

… and head to the press.

Laura is the master of this machine. I actually don’t even know how to make it do anything aside from plugging it in.

Laura picked up with the same time / temperature settings that we left off with before.

The vinyl seemed to go on no problem, but I think the temperature was still a bit hot, as it left a faint mark where the press hit the shirt.

We also played around with some ideas for the online forms that we’ll eventually make for this project.

Above, the blue shirt on the wall.

Detail of the vinyl.

For the sake of true comparison, we also cut the same text in standard Helvetica bold. We also set the temperature a bit lower in hopes of avoiding the marks from the press.

We’re pretty sure this looks better. I think we had discussed grey shirts before, we’ll see…

We ended the day doing some more comparisons. I’m going to wash the shirts and make sure that the temperature / time changes don’t effect the vinyl adhesion. More soon.